


Properties of Magnetism

by meadowfoam



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: AKA all the other times Victor touched Yuuri during Season 1, Body Worship, Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Fluff, Gap Filler, Getting Together, Light Angst, M/M, Skinship, Touch-Starved, Touch-Starved Victor Nikiforov
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2018-11-22 12:18:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11380026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meadowfoam/pseuds/meadowfoam
Summary: Of all the thousands of words that interviewers had dedicated to describing Victor Nikiforov, none of them had mentioned he had magnets in his hands.Katsuki Yuuri, an amateur scholar in all things Victor-related, starts taking notes on this mysterious phenomenon.





	1. April through June

 

Yuuri has read everything ever written about Victor Nikiforov. Interviews, profiles, social media posts: if it’s about Victor, he wants to know what it says. If it’s in a language he can’t read, he’ll look for a translation; if there’s no translation, he’ll feed it through a program online and study the mangled output, looking for keywords, looking for new bits of insight into Victor’s life.

So why, in the hundreds of articles dedicated to describing him, has no one mentioned that Victor Nikiforov has magnets in his hands?

He tests it one day, as the two of them wait for the train. Yuuri has a keenly calibrated awareness of personal space, and as they stand there, he shifts his weight to his right foot and leans a little, overlapping into Victor’s space by centimeters. He makes himself stay there, even though it makes his bones itch. For a little while nothing happens. And then—

Victor’s arm lifts, crosses the minutely foreshortened space between them, and drapes itself over Yuuri’s shoulders. Victor doesn’t say anything as he does it, as if the action isn’t worthy of comment.

Maybe it isn’t. After enough experience with gravity, people generally stop commenting when it holds them against the ground.

But Yuuri still isn’t used to it. He’s met enough international skaters to know that different cultures have different standards when it comes to showing affection. Victor’s friends in Russia probably aren’t thrown off-kilter by his… _tactile_ way of interacting with them. But it’s been weeks now, and Yuuri’s heart still speeds up every time Victor touches him. Which he does, every day. Usually more than once.

Eventually it becomes Yuuri’s own private experiment: cataloging the properties of Victor Nikiforov's magnetism. He’s a scientist, carefully compiling research that he will never in a million years show anyone else.

 

** APRIL **

Victor doesn’t touch Yurio. It’s not for lack of trying: one time he reaches out to correct his form, and Yurio leaps backward like a hissing cat. “Ah, I should’ve known better,” Victor tells Yuuri later that evening. “He doesn’t let Yakov correct him like that, either. I just thought, since we were getting along so well—”

Yuuri wonders how Victor can describe Yurio as “getting along well” with anybody. Yurio is rude, and as prickly as a cactus, and he communicates mostly through shouting. But Victor is never offended by his tirades; he listens to them with laughter, like he finds them charming. Yuuri sometimes benefits from this: Yurio is never nicer to Yuuri than when he wants to complain about Victor. _“Agape,”_ he grumbles one afternoon while they’re unlacing their skates. Lots of Yurio’s complaints start with the word _agape._ _“It’s a feeling,”_ he says, mimicking Victor’s lofty tone. “It’s bullshit. Who cares about _embodying_ anything? It’s a performance. It’s _acting_.”

“Well,” Yuuri says hesitantly. “Wouldn’t being familiar with the emotion make it easier to act?”

“It’s not helping _you,_ is it?” Yurio snaps.

Yuuri doesn’t want to admit that he’s managed to make it to age 23 without much experience in the realm of _eros_. “He’s such a hypocrite,” Yurio says. “I know he didn’t _perfectly embody_ all of his stupid programs. What about that fucking _Mother and Son_ one from two years ago?”

“ _Madonna and Child,_ _”_ Yuuri says, forgetting to conceal his encyclopedic knowledge of Victor’s programs.

“Ugh, he’s not even religious!” Yurio says, chucking one of his skate guards at the wall. “And Georgi says he hasn’t talked to his mother in years. He was _acting._ ”

A jolt goes through Yuuri. This isn’t the first time Yurio has unwittingly revealed information about Victor that never made it into magazine articles, but this is the most surprising by far. “In his interviews, he always makes it sound like he’s close with his parents,” Yuuri says.

Yurio’s face goes sour. “What’s he supposed to say, that they’re assholes?” He chucks his other skate guard at the wall, then with sullen self-consciousness gets up and goes to retrieve them.

Yuuri knows that not everything Victor says in interviews is bound to be true. Yuuri has lied his way through uncomfortable questions plenty of times. But if Victor isn’t being truthful about something as significant as his parents, then what else has he lied about? Yuuri’s encyclopedic knowledge could be riddled with errors and he wouldn’t even know it.

Later that day, after dinner, Yurio stomps off to consider _agape_ alone in the hot springs. Yuuri is picking at the last of a deeply unsatisfying plate of greens, and Victor is still at the table, engrossed in a book. That’s consistent, at least: Victor has talked about his reading habit in interviews before. He always said it was something he could do during his moments of downtime that would “nurture his creative spirit.” It makes Yuuri feel guilty for spending _his_ stolen moments playing games on his 3DS.

Makkachin trots into the room, comes right up to Yuuri, and makes an expectant snuffling sound. Yuuri has learned by now that it means she needs to go outside. “Can I take Makkachin out for a walk?” Yuuri asks.

“Of course,” Victor says. “I’ll go with you.”

“I don’t want to distract you from your book.”

“Oh, I’ve read it before,” he says, letting it splay face-down on the table. “What’s outside is much more interesting!”

So the three of them head out into the late light, and Makkachin takes off running, gamboling happily along the route where they take their morning runs. They trail behind her until she becomes interested in a narrow side path and temporarily disappears from view. "Makkachin!" Victor calls.

She trots back far enough to be visible and sits down, her tail sweeping back and forth in the dirt. "Where does that path go?" Victor asks.

"The beach, eventually," Yuuri says.

Victor goes over to Makkachin and playfully fluffs up her ears. “You like the beach, don’t you?” he asks. Makkachin seems to interpret his tone as permission, because she immediately abandons Victor’s attentions in favor of darting back down the path. He laughs. “I can’t say no to her.”

So Yuuri follows both of them down the path. It slopes downward in a long, gentle curve, and it’s narrow enough that Yuuri automatically hangs back a little instead of walking shoulder-to-shoulder with Victor. But Victor slows down until Yuuri catches up with him, and then he matches Yuuri’s strides so evenly that there’s nothing Yuuri can do to shake him off.

Yuuri’s insides start to itch. He can’t help it: every cell in his body is singing _too close, too close, too close_. Victor’s hand is swinging only inches away from his, so near that he braces himself for the magnetic _snick_ of their palms connecting.

But they don’t. Victor is staring with absorption at Makkachin, who has paused to nose at something in the dirt. Victor puts his hands up to his mouth and calls something disapproving in Russian. Makkachin sniffs the ground longingly one last time and veers away.

Victor lowers his arms. The back of his hand brushes against Yuuri's; it instantly sends Yuuri into high alert. But the touch is just glancing, incidental. The cup of Victor's hand does not click into place with his.

Yuuri relaxes a little. It’s a new piece of evidence to add to the collection: even Victor thinks it’s going too far to walk around hand-in-hand. It’s a sensible and reassuring boundary. Even so, when the path widens a little ways down the embankment, Yuuri lets his relieved body veer away like it wants to, until he’s out of Victor’s bubble and walking a more natural distance away.

Victor glances at him, crosses the natural distance with two sideways steps, and slips his arm around Yuuri’s shoulders.

Ah. There it is.

“You’ve been very quiet all day,” Victor says. His hip brushes distractingly against Yuuri’s as they walk.

“I’ve—I’ve been thinking about _eros_ ,” Yuuri says. Then, nervous to have mentioned _eros_ while Victor is a hot line pressed against his side: “And _agape_ , too. I don’t think I have a good handle on either of them.”

“ _Agape_ is probably harder to understand,” Victor admits. “Don’t tell Yurio I said that.”

“I won’t. He’ll kick me.”

Victor grins. “We all know what it’s like to desire something,” he says, “but unconditional love is harder to pinpoint.  I might describe it as the love of a parent towards a child, but in Yurio’s case…” His smile fades. “I’ve never met Yurio’s parents. And considering how much time I’ve spent around him…that’s telling, isn’t it?”

Yuuri thinks back to the expression on Yurio’s face as they talked about Victor’s parents. It was sour and a little secretive, quite unlike his usual free-flowing rage. Yuuri feels a peculiar twinge of sadness. “Why give him _agape_ , then?”

“Because it’s meant to be a challenge,” Victor says. “For both of you. It would be too easy for Yurio to channel his, hmm, _intensity_ into _eros._ And it would be too easy for you to channel all the love in your life into _agape_.”

“The love in _my_ life?”

“Sure,” Victor says. “The love of a parent to a child, or a sister to a brother. The love of a teacher watching her student flourish. The fondness that lives underneath enduring friendships. There’s too much love around you to present a _real_ challenge.” He smirks a little and bumps his hip against Yuuri’s. “Now, _desire—_ _”_

Yuuri feels a rising panic and casts around for something to stop Victor’s train of thought. “What about you, Victor?” he asks in a rush. “I know you won’t tell Yurio what your _agape_ is, but there must be something you have in mind. _”_

Victor looks up at the fading light in the sky. Is Yuuri imagining it, or is Victor’s arm tenser than it was a moment before? “Er—but that’s a personal question,” Yuuri says, alarmed. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“No, it’s all right,” Victor says. “Actually, I’m surprised you and Yurio didn’t guess it right away. It’s Makkachin.”

At the sound of her name, Makkachin darts back to them and wags her tail expectantly. Victor lets go of Yuuri and kneels down to lavish affection on her. “She’s the truest example of unconditional love I’ve ever known,” he says.  Makkachin licks his face and he laughs: an easy, untroubled sound.

“But—” Yuuri says, and even as the words are coming out of his mouth he knows he shouldn't be saying it:  “What about _your_ family?”

Victor’s hands go still in Makkachin’s fur.

A yawning chasm of guilt opens up where Yuuri’s stomach used to be.  Why, why, _why_ had that question tripped so heartlessly off his tongue?  He knows full well that the answer can't be anything good. 

Makkachin noses at Victor’s face. He resumes petting her, his movements slow and distracted. “I wouldn’t call my family’s love _unconditional,_ ” he says at last, his face tilted away from Yuuri. “I’d say they _aspired_ to unconditional love. They just never quite made it there.”

Yuuri, feeling wretched: “I’m sorry.”

Victor looks at him. “Don’t be,” he says simply.  “They tried, at least.  That’s more than some people get.”

His voice has regained some of its lightness. He stands up and inhales deeply; the scent of the ocean is growing stronger. “How close are we to the beach?” he asks.

“Pretty close.”

He smiles. “Then we should go enjoy it before it gets dark!”

Victor reaches out, takes Yuuri’s hand, and starts pulling him along the sloping path. Yuuri trips after him, his stomach churning. He’s somehow both surprised and not surprised at all.

 

** MAY **

 

When Victor finds out that Yurio begrudgingly posed for a photo with Yuuko’s triplets before he left—and it ended up being one of their most-liked photos on Instagram—he promptly insists they take one with him, too. Yuuri watches them from the ice, four indistinct blurs posing rinkside while another blur takes the photo. He makes the connection later, when he sees the picture on his phone: Victor, crouched down with that silly smile he wears when he’s having fun, and the triplets, beaming and self-important in the circle of his arms. Within days it beats Yurio’s photo in likes. Victor tags Yurio and boasts about it; Yurio replies _what are you even talking about._ His lowercase indifference is devastating.

Without Yurio as a buffer, Yuuri is left alone with the baffling, inexplicable _fact_ of Victor Nikiforov. He copes badly with it, at first. For so long, Yuuri’s conception of Victor has been constrained by paper and video: still images, recorded performances, televised events that eventually come to an end. Victor has always had demarcation points. Yuuri could memorize the shape of his face on posters, or the shape of his body on television screens, but that was all he had. It was why he used to spend so much time looking through interviews for new information: he was trying to build a picture of Victor beyond those starts and stops.

Now Victor is here. And he _never stops_. There is no endpoint; there is no point when the camera turns away from him, obscuring him from Yuuri’s view. Victor keeps existing, and more alarmingly, he keeps existing _because Yuuri is there._ Victor sleeps one room away from Yuuri, eats his meals at the same table as Yuuri, sits next to Yuuri whenever there’s a moment to sit: on the train, in the hot springs, on the bench where they lace up their skates. Without Yurio around, Victor’s focus on Yuuri becomes laser-like.

Yuuri can’t handle that amount of scrutiny from anyone, let alone the person in the world he wants to impress most.

So sometimes it’s a relief to have some scientific distance. He tries to observe Victor dispassionately, analytically, cataloging his properties and laws. Victor has two modes of affection: deliberate, and automatic. Yuuri isn’t sure which one is scarier. His deliberate touches are soft, meaningful, and they land in places Yuuri isn’t expecting: his lips, his chin, the sensitive inside of his wrist. But his automatic touches are entirely unpredictable; they bubble up from somewhere in his subconscious while he’s otherwise distracted. One day at Ice Castle, Victor and Yuuri lean against the counter and go over their scheduled rink times with Yuuko, and as Victor talks to her, his hand moves to the back of Yuuri’s neck and massages the tightness he finds there. Yuuri isn’t sure he even realizes he’s doing it: when Victor finishes talking and looks over at Yuuri, his hand pauses, as if he’s just caught it in the act of being disobedient. When it moves again, his touch is slower and more deliberate: his thumb fanning over the nape of Yuuri’s neck in firm, steady arcs.

And—it isn’t that Yuuri doesn’t like it. He _does._

That’s scary, too. Because Yuuri knows he’s not the type of student Victor was expecting; he’s anxious, weak-willed, indecisive. He’s not a student worth ending a successful career over. Victor never shows anger and rarely shows frustration, but that doesn’t mean he’s not feeling it. It just means there won’t be any warning when Victor tells him that he’s quitting. He’ll say it with a smile and leave for Russia the next day.

Yuuri knows if he gets used to him, it’ll be all the more painful when he leaves.

So he starts avoiding Victor’s touch. He starts avoiding his presence off the ice. For days he goes to sleep full of guilt, curled around an ache in his chest that he refuses to put a name to. He waits for Victor to give up and go home.

Victor takes him to the beach instead.

Makkachin settles between them on the sand; when Victor’s hand floats up unconsciously, it meets Makkachin’s soft fur instead of Yuuri. Yuuri watches Victor’s hand stroking her side and thinks, fleetingly, that he misses it. The memory of Victor’s touch, from featherlight to leaden, replays itself on Yuuri’s skin as he listens to him talk.

Until Victor put the concept of _agape_ in front of Yurio like a puzzle to be solved, Yuuri had never thought about love in terms of _conditional_ and _unconditional_. His family’s love has always been steady, if uncomprehending—Yuuri thinks they don’t show disappointment at his poor performance because they don’t understand figure skating well enough to realize how badly he’s failed.  Minako’s love has always been a core of iron wrapped in a gauzy mix of praise and criticism—she sees his failures, _really_ _sees_ them, and he smarts underneath that visibility. But he can’t say she ever stopped believing in him. She still comes to his performances with her homemade banner; when he shows up at her door at some ungodly hour to beg for studio time, she still pulls her hair up into a limp knot and goes with him.

It never occurred to Yuuri to call that love _unconditional,_ until Victor asks, mildly:

“What do you want me to be to you?”

It’s an off-putting question, because suddenly Yuuri can hear what’s living underneath it.

Victor is asking: _what conditions do you need me to meet?_

Victor is used to operating under other people’s conditions.  He’s used to living up to standards imposed from the outside.  Why wouldn't he be?  He’s dedicated his life to a sport where judges reduce his emotions and artistry down into decimal points.  People have expectations, and Victor meets them.  _Exceeds_ them.  Surprises everyone with just how much he can exceed them. 

Yuuri realizes with unexpected urgency that he doesn’t want to be another person in Victor’s life who only offers him conditional love. 

Not that Yuuri _loves_ Victor.  Well, except that he does—he has for years, has loved the start-stop fragments of him that he saw in videos and pictures. But _this_ Victor, this whole, never-ending Victor—Yuuri doesn’t love _him_.

Well, except—

Except that he’s watching Victor’s hand move through Makkachin’s fur and he’s feeling wistful.  Except that his heart is preemptively broken in anticipation of the moment when Victor gives up and goes back to Russia.  Except that he’s finally noticed the calm, undemanding way Victor keeps reaching out to him, and he’s struck with the very unfamiliar urge to _reach back._

No, Yuuri doesn’t want to put conditions on Victor.  Yuuri doesn’t want Victor to remake himself with starts and stops, constrained by edges, just so Yuuri can be comfortable.  No matter how nerve-wracking Victor’s presence is, Yuuri wants all of it.  Yuuri wants all of him. 

Once he decides that, things get a lot easier. 

A few evenings later, Victor knocks on his bedroom door, and Yuuri hesitates for just a moment before saying “Come in.”  He’s sitting on the floor hunched over his 3DS, and he straightens his posture guiltily before Victor can see.  Victor peers around the door, a sheaf of papers in his hand.  “More forms to fill out,” he says.  “Are you busy?”

“Oh, no, I’m not doing anything,” Yuuri says. He sets the 3DS down in his lap. “You can—” He’s about to say _sit down_ and gesture toward his desk chair, but Victor is already plunking himself down on the floor beside him.

“That’s a game, right?” Victor asks, nodding at the 3DS.

“Yes.”

Victor eyes it.  “Trade you,” he says, holding out the papers. 

“Oh!” Yuuri says, surprised. “Do you play video games?”

“No,” Victor admits. “Well, on my phone, sometimes. But you always seem like you’re having fun.”

Yuuri hesitates.  “Well, this one’s got a lot of menus in Japanese.  Maybe it’s not the best one to start with.” He leans over and grabs his case of cartridges. “What sounds better, something with racing or something with puzzles?”

“Racing,” Victor declares. 

So Yuuri starts a new game for Victor, and is amused when Victor’s posture immediately becomes terrible: neck hunched, elbows swinging. He mutters at the screen in an incoherent mixture of Russian and English.  Yuuri, stuck with a far less exciting task, finds a pen and starts writing.  

After a minute or two, Yuuri sees new movement out of the corner of his eye. He glances over: Victor is fanning his left leg out a little. Yuuri could almost mistake it for an innocent stretch, except that Victor’s leg just happens to be moving steadily closer to _Yuuri_ _’s_ leg. Yuuri tucks his bottom lip between his teeth and watches with an analytical eye as it crosses the space that separates them. When their legs are almost touching, Victor’s foot tilts and rests gently against Yuuri’s ankle.

Yuuri looks back down at the form, his face warm.  He thinks: _Automatic? Deliberate?_

It doesn’t matter. Yuuri likes it.

 

** JUNE **

 

Victor doesn’t touch anyone in Yuuri's family. He seems to intuit that the other Katsukis are not huggers, so he endears himself to them in other ways. He watches soccer with Yuuri’s father, declaring an instant and steadfast loyalty to Sagan Tosu.  He devours with gusto every meal Yuuri’s mother puts in front of him, and she starts bringing him dishes with ingredients he’s never tried before, lingering to watch his reaction.  His parents speak very little English, and Victor speaks very little Japanese, but they manage to communicate through shared enthusiasm.

Mari speaks passable English, and she and Victor mostly talk about Yurio. She’s not at all impressed that she’s talking to a figure skating champion and her brother’s long-time idol, but once Victor proves to be a willing source of gossip about _her_ new idol, she warms to him quickly. “I don’t think I’m Mari’s favorite figure skater anymore,” Yuuri says ruefully after one of their talks.

“Nope!” Victor agrees cheerfully, unaware that Yuuri had been angling for reassurance rather than confirmation.

The fact that Victor knows without asking that the other Katsukis aren’t physically affectionate makes the way he treats Yuuri all the more absurd in comparison.   Yuuri lands a quad Salchow on the first try one morning, clean and precise, and then, paranoid it was a fluke, tries it again.  When he lands just as cleanly and precisely as the first time, Victor shouts “Yuuri, _perfect!_ ” and engulfs him in a hug.  Yuuri might’ve tensed under the suddenness of it, except the rare feeling of success is soaking into his bones and making him buoyant.  He leans into Victor with an exhilarated laugh, letting his hands rest briefly on Victor’s waist.

This is when Yuuri discovers the danger of even mildly encouraging Victor’s touch.  The light pressure of Yuuri’s hands on his waist seems to create a new rule in Victor’s head: Yuuri likes hugs, and therefore he, Victor, is obligated to supply them, multiple times a day, under the flimsiest of pretexts.   Victor starts hugging him after successful jumps—after a frustrating string of _un_ successful jumps—as the punctuation mark to both criticism and compliments.  Sometimes the hugs are quick and light—and sometimes Victor pulls him so close that Yuuri’s world temporarily becomes the black of Victor’s shirt, the scent of his sweat and deodorant, and the hammering of Yuuri’s own heart in his chest. 

Because he likes it.  _Likes_ is the only word he’ll let himself apply to it.  He likes the way Victor throws out his arm when Yuuri skates up to him, trapping him for a second in the crook of his elbow.  He likes the way Victor hurtles toward him on the ice after those rare breakthrough moments, coming to a sharp stop in the split second before they collide, so only a whisper of momentum is left to carry them into each other.  One day, as Victor reaches for him, he asks with genuine curiosity:  “Did Yakov always hug you this much?”

“Oh, no,” Victor says, his breath warm against Yuuri’s ear.  “Yakov was never so sentimental.  _I_ always had to hug _him_ when I thought I’d done something particularly well.  It made him very grumpy.”

Yuuri smiles into Victor’s shoulder.  “Do you miss him?” he asks.

“Um,” Victor says doubtfully, and Yuuri laughs.  “Well, yes, of course.  But I admit I think of him a lot more fondly now that he's not yelling at me everyday.  And of course you’re much nicer to hug than Yakov.”

His voice is teasing, but it doesn’t stop Yuuri’s heartbeat from accelerating. “Oh?” he says lightly.  “Why's that?”

“You're much cuter.”

A pleasant buzz temporarily erases Yuuri’s capacity for nuanced thought.  “I don’t know,” he says, barely aware of the words tumbling out of his mouth.  “I’ve seen clips of Yakov back in his skating days.  He had a kind of…gruff…appeal.”

Victor pulls away from him, looking pained, and moves his hands searchingly over Yuuri's skull.  “You must’ve hit your head on the ice today,” he says sadly.  “You're speaking utter nonsense. Why were you watching old Yakov clips?”

_Because he's your coach,_ Yuuri doesn’t say. “I was curious,” he says.  “He's coached so many high-ranking skaters, I wanted to see if he matched up in skill.”

“What did you think?”

“Um,” Yuuri says.

Victor laughs with undisguised glee.  “Well, skating and coaching are two different skills,” he says.  Then, momentarily bashful: “As, ah, I'm finding out more and more every day.”

For about a week, the hugs stay confined to the ice, an ostensible coaching tool.  But then Yuuri’s free skate music arrives, and in the flurry of excitement over creating and refining choreography, the lines between the rink and the onsen get a little blurry.  Victor and Yuuri brainstorm all through dinner, passing a notepad back and forth; they dart in and out of each other’s rooms long after they're supposed to be in bed, demonstrating movements in their bare feet.  So it’s not entirely surprising when, after one particularly inspired display, Victor flings himself at Yuuri the same way he would on the ice; and it’s not entirely surprising when Yuuri, forgetting how Victor’s mind operates, catches him with an unselfconscious laugh. 

And thus a new rule forms in Victor’s head: Yuuri likes hugs anywhere and everywhere, no matter who might be around to see it.  The first time Mari comes into the dining room and finds Victor happily wrapped around her little brother, she raises an eloquent eyebrow and retreats silently.  The next time she and Yuuri are alone, she says:

“You know, Mom had me dust your room every now and then while you were gone.  I saw those posters of him a _lot_ over the years.”  She tilts her head thoughtfully.  “This isn’t what I expected him to be like.”

Yuuri says, feelingly:  “Me neither.”

“But,” Mari says, “you’re not disappointed.”

Yuuri thinks of his teenage self sitting on the floor of his bedroom, staring up at the posters on his wall and dreaming of skating on the same ice as Victor.  It had been his singular, life-long goal, and it hadn’t even occurred to him that anything more was possible.  That one day, Victor Nikiforov would focus the full scope of his creativity and talent on _him._ That Yuuri would never be touched by another human being as frequently or as intimately as he was by Victor Nikiforov.

“No,” he says, willing himself not to blush, “I’m not disappointed.”

The next afternoon he and Victor are back at the rink, translating their barefoot movements onto the long sweep of the ice.  Yuuri does his first run-through of the step sequence in the second half of the program, and Victor calls him over to critique it.  Partway through, Victor stops talking, looking fixedly at Yuuri’s mouth.  Yuuri realizes he’s been absently running his tongue over his chapped lips for the last minute.  “Hold on,” Victor says, and skates over to retrieve something from his jacket.  He comes back with a little pot of lip balm. 

“Oh, I’ve got chapstick in my bag,” Yuuri hastens to say.  “Let me—”

“Have you ever tried this stuff?” Victor asks, holding up the container.  “Chris Giacometti told me about it.  It’s miraculous, I didn’t believe it until I tried it myself.  Here, feel!”

Yuuri frowns. “Feel?”

Victor takes Yuuri’s hand and kisses the pads of his fingers. A wave of heat sweeps through Yuuri’s entire body, sensation moving faster than his mind can process it. “Oh,” Yuuri says weakly, as Victor isolates Yuuri’s first finger and presses another kiss to it.  His lips are smooth and warm.  “You’re—you’re right, they’re very soft.”

“See?” Victor says. “Compare them to yours.”  He pushes Yuuri’s fingers against his own rough, flaky lips.

Yuuri feels light-headed and ridiculous. “No, you’re right,” he manages.

Victor lets go of Yuuri’s hand with a look of satisfaction and unscrews the lid of the lip balm. Yuuri—foolish, unscientific Yuuri—thinks for a moment that Victor is going to hand him the container. Instead Victor sweeps a finger inside the container and looks at Yuuri expectantly.

Of course.

Yuuri knows he should protest. He knows if he lets Victor do it once, Victor will do it again, and again, until Yuuri’s lips are so satin-smooth they’ll slide off anything they touch.   If he lets Victor do it, it’ll create a new rule in Victor’s head: that the maintenance of Yuuri’s lips is now entirely his, Victor’s, domain. 

Yuuri folds his hands behind his back and inclines his head forward.

Victor beams, steps in too close, and runs his slick finger over Yuuri’s lower lip.  For a second—not even a full second, a fraction of a second—a notion jumps unbidden into Yuuri’s head: the press of Victor’s finger, a little too firm, slipping through Yuuri's parted lips and into the heat of his mouth.

Yuuri’s face flushes hotter than the sun, and he clamps his lips together so tightly that Victor has to angle his finger to apply the balm to his upper lip. Victor screws the lid back onto the container and looks at Yuuri closely. “Did you want to take a break?” he asks, pressing the back of his hand against Yuuri’s forehead. “You look overheated.”

_“No,”_ Yuuri says, trying not to sound shrill.  “I’m fine.  Can we take it from the start of the step sequence?”

He skates back out to center ice without waiting for permission.  His heartbeat is wild and asynchronous in his chest.  Where the hell had _that_ come from?  What the hell had happened to _scientific distance?_   He already knows that Victor Nikiforov has magnets in his fingers; this is just proof that Victor Nikiforov also has magnets in his lips.  His soft, smooth, expensively moisturized—

Yuuri doesn’t bother trying to practice his jumps that afternoon.  He’s so distracted he knows he won’t be able to land a single one.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: July through October!


	2. July through October

** JULY **

 

Makkachin eats something she’s not supposed to, and the world stops for half a day while they take her to the animal hospital. Yuuri sits with Victor in the waiting room, remembering the times he came here with Vicchan, full of panic and worry. Victor is closed-down, his shoulders hunched, his hands knotted into fists in his lap. Yuuri has never seen him like this and has no idea how to comfort him. He tries to think of how he felt when Vicchan was sick, what he wanted the people around him to do, and finds he can’t remember. Those memories have been smeared by distance until they’re unrecognizable.

When the veterinarian emerges and declares with purposeful cheer that Makkachin will be fine, Yuuri sees Victor relax by only a fraction. It isn’t until they let him see her, and she gives his outstretched hand a sleepy lick, that he finally turns back into himself. He strokes the top of her head, murmuring in Russian, his eyes bright with unshed tears.

When the vet says she should stay overnight for observation, just in case, Yuuri sees Victor’s internal struggle. He so desperately wants to bring her back home. “Of course,” he says finally. His hands linger on her a little too long before they leave; Yuuri can see the effort it takes him to let go of her. 

Yuuri offers to call Mari to pick them up. Victor shakes his head. “I'm not in a hurry to get back,” he says. “I'm just going to be staring at the walls waiting for morning.” So the two of them walk, leisurely and quiet, as the afternoon light mellows into evening. Yuuri walks closer to Victor than he normally would. He doesn’t want to touch him, afraid of intruding on Victor’s pain, but he thinks maybe he should be there for Victor to touch if the impulse strikes. 

The impulse doesn’t strike. Victor’s hands remain in his coat pockets. As they get closer to home, his posture stiffens, and Yuuri wonders if he’s remembering Makkachin running down these same roads, trotting behind Victor’s bicycle. “She’s—” Victor says, then hesitates. “She’s still very active, for her age. But she’s old.”

Yuuri nods. He doesn’t mention that he remembers when Victor got her, that he probably still has the magazine in which Victor first talked about her.

“After Worlds, when everyone was asking me what my plans were for next season… ” Victor’s jaw tightens. “I kept thinking of her. It almost felt like the clock was ticking for both of us. I only had a few years left to be competitive, and she only had a few…”

He can’t finish the comparison. “When I started thinking about my programs for this season,” he says, “none of my ideas felt worthy of the time I’d be spending away from her. None of them said, _this is worth not being there for her last—_ _”_

Yuuri inhales audibly. Victor glances at him, then looks suddenly stricken. “I’m sorry,” he says in a rush. “Yuuri, I’m sorry. I know this isn’t theoretical for you.”

“No, I —” Yuuri swallows around the faint lump that has risen in his throat. “It just means that I understand what it feels like.”

Victor had gone wandering around the inn a few days after he arrived, and he’d noticed the little shrine with Vicchan’s picture. He asked Yuuri about it, and Yuuri said briefly that it was his childhood dog, who’d died last year before the Grand Prix Final. He hadn’t meant to say it like it was an excuse, but then he saw the realization dawning in Victor’s eyes, and he knew Victor had just mentally added a sympathetic asterisk to Yuuri's last-place finish. Yuuri could’ve kicked himself for mentioning it. It felt like he was trying to deflect responsibility for his poor performance. 

But listening to Victor talk about Makkachin right now makes Yuuri feel a tiny bit softer towards himself. If it had been Makkachin who died, and Victor who fell apart on the ice last year, would Yuuri have thought any less of him? Of course not. Makkachin is Victor’s _agape_ : one of the most important parts of his life. What could a competition matter, compared to that?

“Yuuri,” Victor says, “when you need a distraction, you like to skate figures, right?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s—let’s go skating.” He hesitates. “I mean—I’d like to. You don’t have to, I can just—”

Yuuri wants to touch him. He wants to reach out and physically smooth away the hesitation and hurt on Victor's face. But Victor isn’t reaching for him, and so Yuuri closes his hands into static fists. “No, I’ll go,” Yuuri says. “I don’t want to stare at the walls until morning either.”

Nishigori is still at the rink doing paperwork, but after saying hello he gives them a wide berth. He’s either heard about Makkachin, or he can sense the strained, unhappy energy that both of them are giving off. The rink is empty, the ice freshly resurfaced and gleaming. Yuuri and Victor sit down to put their skates on, and when Yuuri’s done he straightens in his seat, waiting for Victor to finish. 

Then he notices Victor’s hands aren’t moving. He’s staring at the ground, his brow furrowed, his laces taut between his fingers. Yuuri stands, thinking it might jar Victor out of his thoughts, but it doesn’t. Even when Yuuri comes over to stand right in front of him, he doesn’t move. 

Before he can stop himself, he reaches out to lay the very tips of his fingers on Victor’s shoulder. Victor looks up. He blinks at Yuuri for a moment, and with a twinge of uneasiness Yuuri lets his hand fall away. 

Victor drops his undone laces and reaches out for him. His hands close around Yuuri’s waist, and Victor pulls him forward, wraps his arms around Yuuri and _leans_ , his head buried against Yuuri’s side. 

Relief saturates every cell in Yuuri’s body. He touches Victor’s head—not on top, where Victor is convinced he’s developing a bald spot, but low, close to his neck. His fingers push furrows through Victor’s hair, his nails brushing briefly against Victor’s scalp. 

Victor shivers. “Sorry,” Yuuri says. “Did that tickle?”

Victor nods against the thin fabric of Yuuri’s shirt. “It’s nice, though.”

So Yuuri keeps doing it, fingernails moving in gentle circles. From this angle he can’t see Victor’s face: he can’t tell if the little lines of tension and worry are still there. “Sorry,” Victor murmurs after a slow minute. “This isn’t skating.”

“It’s okay,” Yuuri says. “I know you don’t actually like to skate figures.”

Victor looks up at Yuuri. There’s still a tiredness in his expression, but now he looks more puzzled than pained. “When did I say that?” he asks curiously. 

Yuuri thinks about it and feels a guilty jolt. “In an interview I read,” he admits. “A long time ago.”

Victor smiles. It’s barely a smile, his downturned lips smoothing into a neutral line, but it’s something. “You remember the strangest things,” he says. 

Yuuri smiles, too. “But,” Victor says, “my form is excellent. I’ll show you.”

Victor finishes lacing up his skates and they go out onto the ice. Yuuri doesn’t follow Victor; he hefts himself up and sits on the boards. “What are you doing?” Victor asks. 

“I’m getting ready to admire your form,” Yuuri says. 

Now Victor’s smile is perceptible even from a distance. “All right,” he says. 

Sure enough, Victor makes skating figures look just as beautiful as everything else he does. Yuuri traces his path with his eyes: smooth, sure, footwork impeccable. Victor’s lowered head makes him look a little melancholy, the curtain of his hair obscuring one eye. “Yuuri,” he calls out after a few minutes, eyes still intent on that curving path.

“Hmm?”

“I’ve never been so bored in my life.”

Yuuri laughs. Victor tosses his hair out of his eyes and takes off fast down the ice. He launches himself into a triple axel, and Yuuri’s heart leaps with him, the sharp sound of a clean landing echoing in the empty rink. Victor immediately goes into an unfamiliar series of steps, too practiced to be improvised, not practiced enough to be something from an old program. Yuuri drops down to the ice and skates closer to see him better. His stomach swims a little, a feeling he associates with sitting too close to a television screen, Yuuko’s excited voice in his ear. It’s the exhilaration of watching Victor Nikiforov do something brand new. 

Victor moves into a triple loop, but once he lands it, he drifts to a stop, like the spool of his imagination has run out. Yuuri skates over. “What was that?” he asks breathlessly. 

“Oh, nothing,” Victor says. “Just some bits of an old program.”

Yuuri hesitates for a second. “No?” he says, even though it’s going to give him away. “If it was from an old program, I would’ve recognized it.”

Victor gives him another curious look. “Really? Have you memorized _all_ my old programs?”

Yuuri feels heat creeping onto his face. Victor gets a teasing look in his eye. “Yuuri,” he says, “I’m beginning to suspect you’re a fan of mine.” 

“You already know I am,” Yuuri mutters.

“Well, it was just a fragment of something I’ve been thinking about,” Victor says. “It’s still a bit early to be worrying about your exhibition skate, but I’ve been piecing together a few ideas.”

“Oh!” Yuuri says, surprised. “I had been meaning to talk to you about that, too. I thought—”

He stops. He’s been caught out as an embarrassing Victor fanboy twice in the last ten minutes, and what he’s about to suggest is just going to be icing on the cake. “What?” Victor asks.

“Well,” Yuuri says, “me skating Stammi Vicino is what caught your attention.”

Victor smiles. “Among other things.”

Yuuri isn’t sure what he means by that, but he soldiers forward. “Everyone saw me skate it when I wasn’t at my best,” he says. “So I thought it might be nice if I could perform it when I _was_ at my best. So I could do it justice.”

Victor’s face lights up. “Yuuri!” he exclaims. “I would love that!” He touches his finger to his lips, and Yuuri can see his thoughts are starting to race. “Is it important to you that it’s a faithful copy? When I watched the video, I kept thinking there were changes I would’ve made if I’d choreographed it for you originally, to play more towards your style.”

“It’s your program,” Yuuri says. “I’d never say no to your suggestions.”

“Well, you should, if you don’t like them,” Victor says. Then, confidently: “But you will! Do you want to see what I have in mind?”

Yuuri almost says _“Right now?”_ , because it’s getting dark outside, and neither of them are properly warmed up or wearing the right clothes. But Victor looks excited—looks like _himself_ again—and Yuuri wants it to last as long as it can. 

“Yes,” Yuuri says with conviction. “Show me.”

 

***

 

Two days later, Makkachin is acting like she’s never been sick. At breakfast, she sits patiently while Victor bear-hugs her, then rests her head in his lap for him to pet while he eats. “We should do something she likes today,” Victor says. 

“Sleep?” Yuuri asks, only half-facetiously. “I wouldn’t mind—”

“It’s too nice outside to sleep!” Victor exclaims. “We should take her to the beach.” He scratches behind her ears. “What do you think, Makkachin? The beach?”

Yuuri doubts she recognizes the word, but she definitely recognizes the excitement in his tone. She leaps to her feet with a furious wag of her tail. “That’s a yes!” Victor says, scrunching up her face. 

So they put on their swim trunks underneath their clothes and head out into the warm morning air. It’s the first time Makkachin’s been allowed outside since she came home from the vet, and she takes off at a gallop. Victor shouts something in Russian to her, but she doesn’t slow. “I don’t think I ever taught her the meaning of _rest day_ ,” Victor laments. He and Yuuri speed up to a jog to follow her. 

“Are you too tired to run?” Yuuri asks, a little teasingly. 

“I’m an old man, Yuuri,” Victor says, pulling a face. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“I’ll race you to the footpath,” Yuuri says.

Victor ignores him for a few seconds, then puts on a sudden and very unfair burst of speed. Yuuri scrambles to catch up, and for a little while all three of them rotate in and out of the lead, Makkachin sabotaging herself periodically to inspect interesting-smelling things. When the footpath to the beach comes into view, Victor is ahead, and Yuuri slows a little, throwing his hands up in surrender. 

Victor stops with a triumphant look on his face. “Pretty fit for an old man,” Yuuri acknowledges as he approaches. And then, so fast he knows it’ll take Victor a second to comprehend it: “Race you to the beach!”

Now Yuuri has the unfair head-start. His continued momentum carries him down the gentle incline while Victor makes a strangled sound and starts running again. _“Yuuri!”_ he yells. “It’s a _slope_. You’re going to twist your ankle!”

Yuuri doesn't buy his concern for a second. “Then stop me!” he calls over his shoulder.

Victor says something low and indistinct, and Yuuri hears the thudding rhythm of his footsteps become faster and heavier. Yuuri speeds up too. He knows he’s in better shape than Victor at this point—Victor hasn’t been nearly as diligent about his diet as Yuuri has over the last few months. 

Makkachin soon flies past Yuuri and takes the lead, but Victor doesn’t manage to overtake Yuuri the entire way down. When Yuuri bursts onto the beach, he feels his feet skid in the sand, and he knows that misstep is all Victor needs to close the last bit of distance. He braces himself for impact. He hears Victor's footsteps and huffing breath—

—but instead of barreling right into him like Yuuri expects, Victor side-steps him and grabs him by the waist. The ground disappears from under Yuuri's feet as Victor sweeps him up into the air, the momentum turning them both in a whirling circle.

_“Vic-tor!”_ Yuuri yells, helpless against the sputtering laughter in his voice. “You’re going to hurt _yourself!”_

Victor manages two rotations before their momentum runs out. He deposits Yuuri back on the ground lightly, still mindful of twisted ankles, but his arms pull Yuuri in close and don’t let go. “I'm retired,” Victor pants into his ear. “I can do whatever I want.”

“You’re _gonna_ be retired if you wrench your back out from fooling around!”

Victor laughs. “You sound just like Yakov.” He pauses. “Is that what _I_ sound like when I lecture you?”

_“Yes!”_

“Oh no,” he says fondly. “My poor suffering Yuuri.”

Makkachin finds a stick and drops it at their feet. Victor releases Yuuri so he can hurl it into the shallow surf, and Makkachin jumps through the lapping waves, barking excitedly. “You’re such a hypocrite,” Yuuri grumbles as they follow her down the beach. “ _Don't run, you'll twist your ankle.”_

“I knew what I was doing!” Victor protests. “Haven’t you ever done lifts before?”

“Not since Yuuko and I were kids.”

“I’m _very_ good at them,” Victor says loftily. “I’ve gotten Georgi Popovich over my head a half-dozen times without hurting myself.”

“Did Georgi at least get a warning in advance?”

Victor looks a little guilty. “Sometimes?”

Makkachin returns with the stick and drops it at Yuuri’s feet. Yuuri throws it in a long, high arc down the beach, and Victor gives Yuuri a deliberating look. “I could teach you,” he says. 

“Teach me what?”

“How to do lifts,” Victor says. “You have the upper body strength for it.”

Yuuri doesn’t think a good throwing arm necessarily translates into good upper body strength, but the thought of sweeping Victor off the ice and into the air does funny things to his stomach. “Would I be practicing on you?”

“Unless there’s someone else you’d rather be practicing on,” Victor says, heaving a theatrical sigh. “I spent all that time teaching Georgi lifts, and he never lifted me _once_. He just ran off and used what he learned to sweep Anya off her feet. Literally.”

“Who’s Anya?”

Victor looks surprised. “Haven’t I told you the tragic love story of Georgi and Anya?”

“No?”

“Well,” Victor says, draping his arm heavily over Yuuri’s shoulders. “It’s a good thing today’s a rest day, because it’s a very long story.” He sweeps one hand in the air in front of him, as if imagining his own words appearing on a movie screen. “Once upon a time, in the magical land of St. Petersburg, there was a beautiful ice dancer named Anya—”

Yuuri can’t tell if he’s joking or in earnest, but he doesn’t think he can handle it either way. He ducks out from under Victor’s arm and breaks out into a run. “Race you to the jetty!” he yells over his shoulder. 

“Yuuri!” Victor shouts after him, footsteps thudding once more. “It’s a very _funny_ tragic love story! _Yuuri!_ ”

 

***

 

The next time they go to the rink, Victor gives Yuuri two seconds’ warning before grasping him under the arms and sweeping him up into the air. Yuuri’s shriek and Victor’s laugh both echo off the walls.

Ten minutes of enthusiastic instruction later, Yuuri lifts Victor off the ice for the first time. He looks up at Victor’s face—eyes closed, smile huge—and thinks dizzily that maybe Victor ended up in the wrong sport. He’s the world’s most magnificent solo skater, but Yuuri doesn’t know if he’s ever seen Victor as happy as he looks right now, balanced in the scaffolding of Yuuri’s arms, his skates not even touching the ice. 

By the end of the evening, it’s given Yuuri’s embarrassing inner fanboy an absurd idea about his exhibition program.

Victor says yes before he’s even finished his sentence. 

 

** AUGUST **

 

Victor only touches Minako when she touches him first, which is usually when the two of them are drunk and trying to stand up from the inn’s low tables. Yuuri goes to bed early one night and is woken up by a very badly spelled text from Victor, asking for help. Yuuri finds the two of them giggling as Minako attempts to use Victor’s shoulder as leverage to stand. Victor is too far gone to remain appropriately sturdy, and he starts to bend backward. Yuuri leaps in and pulls Minako upright before Victor can send them both crashing down.

Minako teeters on her feet, then pats Yuuri’s cheek. “That’s all I needed,” she says cheerfully, and turns toward the door. She doesn’t seem quite as bad off as Victor—but then, she’s been drinking for longer than he’s been alive.

“Do you want me to walk with you?” Yuuri asks.

“No,” she says. She narrows her eyes and gives his chest a poke. “You should be in bed. What are you doing up at this hour? If you don’t rest, you won’t heal.”

He doesn’t bother trying to argue with her. She departs with a wave, leaving Yuuri to deal with a boneless, elastic Victor Nikiforov still laughing on the floor. “Sit up,” Yuuri says, trying to sound stern.

Victor’s hands float up towards him. “Help,” he says piteously.

Yuuri rolls his eyes and takes his hands. He hauls Victor into a seated position, but it doesn’t take: Victor’s spine is jelly. He begins to slump down onto the floor again. “No,” Yuuri says, pulling him back up. Then, with a flash of inspiration: “Hold on to me.”

It works exactly as well as he anticipated. Victor beams and wraps his arms around Yuuri’s legs, pressing his face against Yuuri’s thigh. A frisson goes through Yuuri that he tries very hard to ignore. “You have a choice,” he tells Victor. “You can either get up and go to your room, or I can bring you a pillow and you can sleep it off out here.”

“Mmm,” Victor says, his mouth vibrating against Yuuri’s leg. He sounds thoughtful enough that Yuuri thinks he’s trying to decide which one to choose; it takes a good fifteen seconds before Yuuri realizes that Victor has stopped paying attention and intends to hold onto him indefinitely. Fine, Yuuri will decide for him. It would be much easier to leave him here, but he’s afraid Victor will wake at some point during the night, still half-drunk, and stumble around making a racket as he tries to find his room. Yuuri would rather get Victor into his own bed and put Makkachin on top of him so he’ll be less inclined to get up again.

He touches Victor’s head. Victor looks up at him, smiling, letting his head settle back into the steadying cup of Yuuri’s hand. He’s drunk enough that Yuuri thinks he might not remember much tomorrow morning, which is what emboldens him to say, in a low voice:

“Will you let me put you to bed?”

He touches the tip of Victor’s chin so he can’t look away. Victor’s smile fades, and suddenly he’s all eyes: huge and round and staring. A strange thrill goes through Yuuri. It feels powerful: compelling Victor’s attention, tilting his chin up _just so_ , bearing the weight of Victor’s head in his hand. That weight is so heavy, so _trusting_.

“Okay,” Victor whispers, still staring at him.

Getting him upright takes a minute, as the world’s most decorated men’s figure skater is currently as uncoordinated as a newborn foal, but soon Yuuri is leading him slowly to his bedroom. When they arrive at Victor’s bed, Victor lets gravity do the work for him, collapsing onto his duvet at a rough diagonal. He hooks his hands underneath his shirt and tries to take it off, but he loses energy halfway through and sinks back in an awkward tangle of fabric. “Yuuri,” he sighs, sounding defeated.

Yuuri flattens his lips against a smile and helps him pull the shirt all the way off. He pats Victor’s pillow. “Scoot up.”

Victor makes a face, wriggling up until his head is in the right position. Yuuri notices the charging cord for his phone lying on the other side of the bed. “Where’s your phone?”

Victor fishes it out of his pocket, and Yuuri leans over him to grab the cord. He realizes his mistake a split-second too late: Victor senses his proximity and throws happy arms around him. “Yuuuuri,” he wheedles, pulling him close. “Stay with me.”

Victor’s arms are heavy and insistent around him, but Yuuri still manages to get the cord plugged into the phone. He lets it slip from his fingers onto the bed. “You need to sleep,” he tells Victor. 

“You need to _stay_ ,” Victor says, burying his face in the crook of Yuuri’s neck.

Another frisson leaves Yuuri feeling weak. Victor is so close, so warm, so _substantial,_ and when he speaks Yuuri can feel the way his lips move against his skin. He knows that with a little effort, he could pull himself free, but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to pull away—he wants to _sink down_.

He lets his hip drop onto the edge of the bed. It’s a subtle motion, but Victor notices it, and it gives him the leverage he needs to pull Yuuri closer. Yuuri finds himself lying half on top of Victor, his cheek pressed warmly against Victor’s bare shoulder. Victor wraps his arms around Yuuri and exhales, a soft noise of satisfaction. 

“Just for a little bit,” Yuuri murmurs.

Victor’s arms tighten. “No.”

Yuuri can’t help but smile. He lets his eyes drift shut for a moment. “Why do you need me to stay?” he asks lightly. “You saw me all day today.”

“I did _not_ ,” Victor says stubbornly. “You went to bed early. I haven’t seen you for _hours._ ”

Yuuri sighs. “You’re going to get tired of me if you see me too much.”

He feels the point of Victor’s chin touch his forehead. “Yuuri,” he says severely. “Don’t joke.” 

“I’m not joking.”

Victor is quiet for a moment. Then: “Does that mean you’re tired of _me?”_

He sounds hurt. Yuuri feels a flicker of alarm and lifts up his head to look at him. He _looks_ hurt, his face lined and strangely vulnerable in the dim light. “No,” Yuuri says softly. “But that’s different, you know? You’re _Victor_.”

“It’s _not_ different,” Victor says. “You’re my Yuuri.” He touches Yuuri’s cheek, and with gentle pressure he guides Yuuri’s head back down until it’s resting on his shoulder again. “And I want you to stay with me.”

Yuuri can feel his face burning against Victor’s skin. Even Victor's words have magnets in them, pulling Yuuri's name in tight against himself. He feels Victor’s thumb sweep meditatively over the curve of his cheek, and Yuuri closes his eyes and actually contemplates it: falling asleep on the warm, living pillow of Victor’s body. 

He can’t do it. Or, more accurately, he _shouldn’t_ do it. Victor’s drunk, and Yuuri knows from embarrassing personal experience that drunk people make decisions that mortify their sober selves. It’s why Yuuri hasn’t been drunk once since Victor arrived—he can’t risk lowered inhibitions when he’s already inhibiting _so much_. He’s vowed never to mention how many posters of Victor he’s owned over the years; Drunk Yuuri would probably sit in Victor’s lap and describe every single one of them in loving detail. Drunk Yuuri would tell Victor how many times he’s teared up watching his performances—six—and then settle his head down on Victor’s chest and doze there for the rest of his life.

After a while, Victor’s hand falls away from Yuuri’s face, and Yuuri opens his eyes to watch the steady rise and fall of Victor’s chest. His breathing is becoming slower, more regular, and after a few minutes Yuuri can feel Victor’s grip on him soften, his muscles going slack as he slips into sleep.

Yuuri lifts his head and looks at Victor’s face. The troubled lines there have faded. Yuuri bites his lower lip as he realizes that he’s never seen Victor at this angle before: for the first time, he notices the faint convexity of a mole on the underside of his jaw. It’s skin-colored and small, virtually unnoticeable, and Yuuri can’t help himself: he smooths his thumb over it, the tiniest imperfection. 

Then he hears a faint clacking noise coming from the hall, and he looks over at the doorway. Makkachin pads into the room, looking sleepy. Yuuri had left her curled up in his own bed when he went to rescue Victor and Minako, and she’s clearly noticed his absence. She comes up to the foot of the bed and looks at Yuuri.

That had been the plan all along, right? To put Makkachin on top of Victor until he sobered up? The plan had certainly never been to put _himself_ on top of Victor. 

Yuuri makes a quiet patting motion over Victor’s stomach, and Makkachin immediately hops onto the bed and takes her rightful place on Victor’s chest. Victor startles in his sleep, and Yuuri slips away from the bed as Victor runs questioning hands over whatever just attacked him. “Makkachin,” he deduces blearily. He grumbles at her in affectionate Russian, rearranging her in his arms, and when her fluffy head is pressed underneath his chin, he stills and falls back asleep.

Yuuri watches them a moment longer, his face still hot, his heartbeat rapid. Then he goes into the hallway and pulls the door half-shut behind him. 

It takes him a very long time to fall back asleep.

 

***

 

When he goes downstairs the next morning, his eyelids still heavy, he finds Victor slumped at a table among the remains of his breakfast. Usually he beats Yuuri to the rink, but when he looks up, his eyes are glassy and pained. “I hope Minako feels better then I do,” he says.

“She probably does,” Yuuri says. “Can I get you anything?”

“I’ve tried it all already,” Victor says. “Water, aspirin, a shower. I think I just have to wait it out.” He squints at Yuuri. “Did you put me to bed last night?”

“Yes,” Yuuri says cautiously, wondering how much he remembers. 

“Did you take my shirt off?”

Yuuri feels a jolt of alarm. “Um—yes. I’m sorry, you were—”

“No, I appreciate it,” Victor says. “I was just going to say, can you take off my pants too, next time? It gets so hot in the mornings.”

Yuuri looks at Victor’s expression for signs that he’s joking and doesn’t find any. “Do you think it’s going to happen again?” he asks. 

“Well,” Victor says, a little sheepishly. “You know me.”

 

** SEPTEMBER **

 

Yuuri’s train leaves before Victor’s. Victor sees him off reluctantly, his hand resting next to Yuuri’s on the handle of Yuuri’s rolling suitcase. “You’re sure you don’t want me to go with you?” he asks. 

“Yes,” Yuuri says—fairly patiently, considering Victor has asked him twice in the last half-hour. “I’ve done this a million times, and you’d just be bored. Minako-sensei was bored the first time she went with me, too.”

Victor sighs. Behind him, Minako is just barely reining in a smirk. “Yuuri is very independent, you know,” she says. 

“I know,” Victor says, and his gaze drops down to Yuuri’s nose. Yuuri’s independence had gotten him a faceful of the boards at the end of his free skate yesterday. Yuuri knows his nose isn’t bloody anymore, but he has to resist the urge to swipe at it anyway.

When the train arrives, Yuuri feels Victor’s hand creep over and cover his on the suitcase handle. Yuuri tries not to show how much it makes him want to change his mind. For the first time since Victor’s arrival in March, the two of them will be apart for more than a couple hours. Thirty hours, if Yuuri did the math right. Thirty Victor-less hours to match the twenty-three Victor-less years he's already lived through. 

It shouldn't be a big deal.

“We'll be watching you tomorrow!” Minako says, moving forward. She puts a hand on Victor's shoulder, as if to shake him awake. Victor releases Yuuri and sinks his hands deep into his coat pockets.

Yuuri boards the train and looks around carefully to see if there’s anyone he recognizes. Both he and Minami Kenjiro are obligated to spend a day going through the annual JSF rigmarole—a press conference, media interviews, photoshoots— and Minami had looked heartbroken when he found out Yuuri was taking a later train than he was. Yuuri half-expected him to try and switch his tickets, but he doesn’t see anyone familiar as his eyes scan the train. Yuuri sinks down into his seat and closes his eyes. 

Victor could have come. He’d said multiple times that he was willing to endure thirty hours of tedium, all spoken in a language he didn’t understand, if Yuuri wanted him to be there. But Yuuri told him no. He didn’t say “ _This is a test_ ,” because Victor still doesn’t know that Yuuri is an amateur scholar in the field of Nikiforovian magnetism, but this is unquestionably a test. Yuuri and Victor have been living in each others’ pockets for months now, and Yuuri needs to know what it feels like to be separated. In two months it’ll be the Grand Prix Final, the expiration date for their time together, and Yuuri needs to know what his life will feel like on the other side of it. 

When the train starts up, Yuuri ducks down in his seat and does a guilty news search for his own name. Even though he’s anticipating it, the sheer number of articles posted in the last sixteen hours is startling. Yuuri’s positive the Chugoku, Shikoku, and Kyushu Championship has never seen this amount of media attention before, and it’s entirely because Victor was there. The first article he opens has an embedded video called _Katsuki Yuuri Highlights_ , and with a feeling of dread Yuuri crams in his earbuds and presses play.

The first clip is from the start of the short program. He sees himself standing in front of Victor near the boards, and it gives him an odd sense of vertigo: he remembers it happening from the opposite angle. The Yuuri on the screen turns around and looks at the other side of the rink, where a mass of reporters, photographers, and cameramen are waiting for the action to start. Yuuri remembers the way they all collectively paused, staring hard at him with their brows furrowed. They were noticing what the video shows now: Victor Nikiforov reaching out and clapping his arms around Yuuri so firmly that Yuuri almost drops his water bottle in surprise. 

The reporters had seen it coming. How had _Yuuri_ not seen it coming? In the back of his head, he’d been nursing an untested hypothesis that Victor’s magnetism would be altered by the competition atmosphere—a terrible hypothesis, it turned out, based on nothing. The presence of television cameras didn’t dissuade the magnets at all; if anything, it made them stronger. Yuuri watches the Victor on the screen pull him closer, and he feels a strange lurch at the sight of Victor’s face so close to his. He rarely sees himself with Victor from the angle the world sees them from. Victor will pull him in for selfies sometimes, and Yuuko’s triplets manage the occasional surreptitious photo of the two of them together, but there’s something about seeing it in motion that feels entirely different. Victor has his arms around Yuuri, like it’s normal, and now anyone in the world with internet access can witness it. 

The Yuuri on the screen skates out to start his short program, and the Yuuri on the train braces himself and watches. The commentators’ praise washes unheard past his ears; he only notices when their voices jump an octave in disappointment. Yuuri over-rotates his quad Salchow—accidentally turns the triple in his combination jump to a double—but still manages to beat his personal best by nearly ten points. 

Then the video switches over to his free skate, and Yuuri watches himself perform three-fourths of a flawed, over-eager performance before he presses pause. He can’t bring himself to watch his face-first collision with the boards. He fast-forwards to the final moments of the program, where he manages to end strong despite the blood leaking visibly out of his nose. Then the camera captures one of Yuuri’s more interesting scientific discoveries: that the magnets in Victor’s hands are repelled by blood. Well, free-flowing blood: the instant a medic finishes putting cotton up Yuuri’s nostrils, Victor cinches his arms around Yuuri and shakes him with affectionate rage. The Yuuri on the screen submits to it meekly; there’s a dazed look in his eyes that's either from the knock on the head or the way Victor is angrily nuzzling the side of his face. 

Yuuri feels a low hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he closes the video and turns his phone face-down in his lap. He shuts his eyes and tells himself to approach this scientifically. 

_Fifteen minutes,_ he thinks. He pictures himself bent over a clipboard, writing it down. _Fifteen minutes and I already miss him_.

 

***

 

Victor texts him to say he and Minako and Nishigori made it safely back to Hasetsu. Yuuri texts him back to say he’s sitting in a dressing room while some harried makeup artist puts foundation and mascara and eyeliner on him. Victor spams the word _PICTURE_ over and over again until Yuuri sends him a selfie, his face unnaturally smooth, his eyes unnaturally well-defined. Victor asks _Can I put this on Instagram?_ and then does it before Yuuri even has a chance to reply. 

Then the photoshoot starts and Yuuri has to put his phone away, and it’s hours before he can check it again. He comes back to eight different pictures of Makkachin being cute and an increasingly desultory sequence of texts from Victor:

> I’m so bored
> 
> I’m so boredddddd
> 
> Yuuri there is no way I’d be more bored there than I already am here
> 
> I went to the rink and practiced our pairs routine ALONE
> 
> I looked ridiculous
> 
> Yuuko laughed at me
> 
> Now Makkachin’s napping so I can’t even take more pictures of her
> 
> Yuuuuuriiiii

Yuuri doesn’t answer him. Instead, he texts his mother and tells her that Victor is very bored and needs to be put to work. Victor is suspiciously silent for the next two and a half hours. Just as Yuuri’s getting into bed in his hotel room, Victor finally texts:

> Yuuri you’re a little devil
> 
> You left me no choice
> 
> You know I can’t say no to your mother!!!!!
> 
> I know!  
>  That’s why I texted her and not Mari
> 
> Yuuri you’re so cruel to me  
>  I don’t know why I miss you

The hollow feeling in Yuuri’s stomach, diminished by the many distractions of the day, now opens up as massive as a wind tunnel. He rolls onto his side and curls his body around the glowing phone screen. _Thirteen hours_ , Yuuri thinks, trying to feel dispassionate. _Thirteen hours and it’s getting worse, not better._

He types: _I miss you too._

> Good
> 
> This was your silly idea
> 
> It’s only right that you suffer as well

 

***

 

In the morning, Yuuri gets dressed in a suit and tie, stands in front of a room of reporters, and tells them that Victor Nikiforov is the first person he’s ever wanted to hold on to. 

During his speech he gets fired up, passionate, optimistic. It’s not until afterward that his emotions settle, reminding him of the things he didn’t include in his speech. He didn’t tell them that his time with Victor has a pre-set expiration date; he didn’t tell them that, based on twenty-four hours of experimental data, the day he has to let go of Victor is going to be the hardest day of his life. 

Thirty-one hours after he said goodbye to Victor and Minako, Yuuri arrives back in Hasetsu to find the two of them waiting for him at the train station. Yuuri steps off the escalator and Victor smacks into him like a thunderclap. “Yuuri!” he sings, while Yuuri’s brain temporarily shorts out at the sudden transition from _alone_ to _surrounded._

“Victor,” Minako says wryly. “People are staring.”

Victor starts to draw back, his arms loosening around Yuuri, and Yuuri grips the tan cloth of his coat and pulls him forward again. “I don’t care,” Yuuri says, pressing his face against Victor’s collar. 

Victor laughs. 

 

** OCTOBER **

 

Yuuri’s mental state starts deteriorating in the days leading up to the Cup of China. Victor shortens the length of their practice sessions during the day, because he knows Yuuri is going to sneak back out to the rink later at night. “Do you want me to come with you?” Victor asks the first time he catches Yuuri heading out the door after dinner. 

“No,” Yuuri says, feeling guilty. “I just need to. . .”

“Skate figures?” Victor supplies. 

“Yes,” Yuuri says. “And I know how much you hate those.”

With four days to go before they fly to Beijing, Yuuri leaves his dinner half-eaten and heads to the rink, determined to tire himself out to the point that his brain shuts down. He doesn’t skate calming, repetitive figures; he pushes himself hard, running through his programs with a ruthless attention to detail. He skates until the ache in his legs is just on the edge of too much, until the sound of his own heartbeat crowds out any space in his head for conscious thought. Only then does he retreat to figures: gliding quietly, meditatively, trying to keep his mind as blank and silent as an empty room.

What finally startles him back to reality is a familiar low _woof_ —Makkachin is in the rink somewhere. Yuuri skates over to the boards to retrieve his glasses, and he sees Victor talking to Nishigori and Yuuko through the glass windows of the back office. Yuuri squints at the clock on the far end of the rink; he’s been on the ice a lot longer than he meant to be. 

The three of them haven’t noticed that he’s stopped skating. Victor is talking animatedly to them, gesturing for effect, and after some silent punchline all three of them burst into laughter. Nishigori claps Victor on the back with the same familiarity he shows Yuuri, and for a second Yuuri has one of those rare regressive moments, where the last six months of his life temporarily blink out of his memory. The faraway idol that the three of them had watched as children is _here_ , joking with them, friendly with them. _Friends_ with them. The look on Victor’s face isn’t at all polite or aloof or hesitant; he’s grinning. Yuuri knows what that grin means. Victor is having fun. 

And Nishigori’s hand is on his back. 

And Victor’s arms are at his sides. 

Something jumps in Yuuri’s head. He’s exhausted and his nerves are raw and the carefully maintained order of his thoughts has started falling apart. There’s something he hasn’t acknowledged yet, something that he’s kept fastidiously hidden under layers and layers of ordinary thought, and now he can feel it slipping free, pushing up to present itself bright and painful in the forefront of his mind.

Katsuki Yuuri is a scholar and a scientist, and in his six-month experiment on Victor Nikiforov, he has refused to let himself contemplate the research question at the center of everything. There has always been a hidden hypothesis underpinning the whole project. Now it hangs in his head, unavoidable, inescapable:

_Is it only me?_

Because that’s what the evidence suggests. Because that’s what it _feels_ like. To others, Victor is kind, patient, jovial: he’ll reach out a hand to help someone up, or pull someone close to make sure they’re in-frame for a picture. But otherwise his arms stay at his sides. His hands hang there, inert, seemingly unmagnetized. 

Until Yuuri comes up to him. Until some opposing pole inside Yuuri makes Victor’s hands leap up to cross the gap between them. 

Yuuko notices Yuuri watching them, and all three of them turn and wave. With a lurch Yuuri waves back, gesturing to the side of the rink to indicate he’s going to leave. He half-expects Victor to give him a stern look for staying on the ice so long, but he doesn’t. He smiles and gestures toward the lobby to indicate he’ll meet Yuuri there. 

Yuuri goes to unlace his skates. The thought sits in the dead center of his mind and casts its blinding light over everything. _Is it only me?_

He wants the answer to be _yes._

He doesn’t know what he’ll do if the answer is _no_.

In four days, the two of them will be leaving Japan. They’ll be leaving the little bubble they’ve existed in this entire time, where Yuuri is the only tether Victor has to everything around him. They’ll go to Beijing and re-enter Victor’s kingdom: the skating world and everyone in it. What will Victor do when he sees the skaters he used to compete against, his old rinkmates, his old coach? What will Victor do when he’s finally back in the world he left behind, the world he set aside for Yuuri’s benefit?

Yuuri is afraid of the answer. 

When he goes out to the lobby, he finds Victor leaning against the wall, tapping at his phone with an unseeing look in his eyes. He looks up as Yuuri emerges, his expression brightening. “Are you ready to go?” he asks.

Yuuri walks up to him. He can feel the suspended potential of Victor’s movement in the air: he can _feel_ the way his arms will reach out for him, the way his cheek will momentarily press against Yuuri’s as he hugs him. He can _feel_ the warm flutter of breath against his ear as Victor speaks, his mouth so close to Yuuri’s skin that it makes him shiver. There are mathematical equations that can predict the unerring way Victor will move through space as soon as Yuuri gets close to him.

Yuuri brushes past it all. He steps into the bubble of Victor’s personal space and slips his arms around him.

“Yuuri!” Victor says delightedly. He squeezes him tight. “What’s this for?”

“I just wanted to,” Yuuri says, muffled. 

“That’s my favorite reason,” Victor says.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: the Cup of China, Short Program!


	3. November: Cup of China, Short Program

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I optimistically thought I could cover all of November in a single chapter, and then I wrote 5.8K on the Cup of China Short Program alone. So I've split the Cup of China into two chapters and altered the total number of chapters to compensate. Sorry about that, and thank you for your patience :)

 

** NOVEMBER **

 

_ Cup of China - Short Program _

 

Yuuri has spent seven months living in the full, radiant light of Victor’s attention, and he’s grown so accustomed to it that he can feel the precise moment it goes away. 

They walk into the rink in Beijing, and Victor’s attention fans out to encompass everything around him: the bustling world he left behind, the crowds of people who admire him.  The light he casts on Yuuri scatters, diffuses, and Yuuri feels the loss like a chill against his skin.  Victor has a hand on his shoulder, lightly directing him through the venue, but there isn’t any sentiment behind it.  When a woman in Swiss warm-up gear approaches Victor, her hand cheerfully outstretched, Victor releases Yuuri to shake it and lets his hand fall back to his side.

Yuuri knew it was going to happen, but the foreknowledge isn’t enough to stop his stomach from knotting up.  He knows it’s not fair to get upset.  Yuuri isn’t exactly himself at the moment, either: the pre-competition atmosphere is subtly reshaping him, making him blurry.  Excitement and anxiety sit inside his head and yank his thoughts back and forth, an endless mental tug-of-war.  Excitement says he has the skill to win this competition; anxiety says skill by itself won’t be enough.  The deciding factor will be his mental state: seemingly rock-solid one moment, crumbling as easily as a clod of dirt the next.

Yuuri has tried all sorts of techniques to address his anxiety: breathing exercises, visualization, meditation.  But now, as Victor chats in French with the woman in Swiss colors, Yuuri finds his thoughts redirecting themselves into a familiar groove.  For seven months he’s been dealing with stress by narrowing his focus down into a sharp, scientific point, and now his anxious side takes a step back and watches Victor, observes the way he’s holding himself.  Victor’s smile is pleasant, but not warm; his posture is straight, but his arms are crossed.  This is the Victor that Yuuri recognizes from press conferences and television interviews.  It’s not _his_ Victor, silly and enthusiastic and affectionate, but it’s the Victor most appropriate for the moment. 

Yuuri lifts his hand and presses two fingers lightly against the joint of Victor’s elbow.  Victor doesn’t look at him, but Yuuri hears the tone of his voice change, conversational French shifting into the rising cadence of goodbyes.  The woman departs with a wave, and Victor turns, unfolds his arms, one hand settling between Yuuri’s shoulderblades.  “Let’s head towards the locker room,” he says. 

Their path is littered with people who know Victor, who speak brightly and familiarly with him in Russian and French and English.  Victor pauses to greet them, chats with them for a moment, holding himself with a poise that, the longer Yuuri looks at it, borders on self-conscious.  Yuuri’s hardly ever seen Victor act self-conscious before: certainly not during a competition, and not even really in Hasetsu, where his status as a visible foreigner would’ve made self-consciousness natural.  Yuuri doesn’t know what the people speaking in French and Russian are saying, but the conversations in English all seem to run along the same lines.  _So you_ _’re really coaching right now?  How strange!  When will you return to skating?  You still have a few good years left in you, your performance last season proved that…_

Well.  What person wouldn’t be self-conscious if twenty acquaintances came up to them, one after the other, to ask why they’d made such a terrible life decision?  Yuuri, the terrible life decision in question, is ready to crawl out of his skin the third time he hears it in English. 

Then they round a corner, and instead of another accented call of _“Victor!”_ , a familiar voice calls out _“Yuuri!”_ Yuuri sees a cluster of people down the hall; standing in their midst is his old rinkmate Phichit, waving his arms frantically.

“Phichit-kun!” Yuuri calls back, suddenly awash in relief.  Phichit breaks away from the group and jogs over to them, grinning.  He stops just short of Yuuri, but seven months of constant hugging and ten minutes of concentrated insecurity has Yuuri throwing his arms out and pulling him in. 

“Ha ha, wow, Yuuri!” Phichit says, hugging him back.  “Did you miss me that much?  Hey, Leo, come take our picture!”

Yuuri spends the next few minutes submerged in the Phichit Chulanont Social Media Experience.  Phichit wrangles Yuuri into posing for three different photos and a short video saying hi to Phichit’s legion of followers.  “They all miss seeing you,” Phichit says.  “When’s the last time you even updated your Instagram?”

“A couple...weeks ago?” Yuuri says doubtfully. 

Phichit gestures at Yuuri’s phone and Yuuri hands it to him.  Most of the pictures Yuuri posted in Detroit were the result of Phichit commandeering his Instagram, and he doesn't see the point in breaking with tradition now.  Phichit hooks an arm around Yuuri’s neck, snaps a quick selfie, and uploads it.  “Yuuri, you haven’t updated since _September!_ ” Phichit says, aghast.  “I can’t believe I have to go searching through _Victor Nikiforov_ _’s_ Instagram if I want to see pictures of you.”

Yuuri feels a slight pressure on his arm.  Victor had stepped away while the picture-taking was going on, but now he’s back at Yuuri’s side and he’s laid two fingers into the joint of Yuuri’s elbow, a faint smile on his face.  “Ah!” Yuuri says, feeling a little guilty.  “Victor, this is my old rinkmate, Phichit Chulanont.  Phichit-kun, this is—”

“Victor, hello!” Phichit says cheerfully.  “It’s nice to finally meet you in person!  I was telling Leo earlier that I feel like I already know you, I spent so much time looking at your face on the wall of our dorm.”

Yuuri makes a low strangled sound.  “Oh?” Victor says, smiling.  “Did you have one of my posters?”

“Well, not me personally,” Phichit says.  “They were all Yuuri’s.”

_“Phichit-kun!”_ Yuuri hisses.  He hadn’t even thought to swear Phichit to secrecy ahead of time, because it _so_ _obviously_ _went without saying_ that you don’t talk about your friend’s fanboy excesses right in front of his idol. 

“Aw, Yuuri,” Victor teases, giving him a light bump with his shoulder.  “I already know you’re my number-one fan.  A couple of posters aren’t going to shock me.”

Phichit opens his mouth, and Yuuri knows what he’s going to say: that it wasn’t a couple of posters, it was five posters, and that it was only limited to five because their dorm was so small, and that Yuuri kept the rest rolled up in tubes in his closet and swapped them out every other month.  “We’re going to be late for the practice session!” Yuuri announces loudly, and he throws a threatening arm around Phichit’s shoulders and drags him toward the locker room. 

When they make it out to the rink, they find Georgi Popovich already waiting rinkside, doing his warm-up stretches.  Yakov is standing nearby, and when Victor notices him, Yuuri can _see_ the magnets awaken in his hands.  It’s startling: it’s the first time Yuuri has seen it happen so strongly, so immediately, with someone other than himself.  Victor reaches out and grabs his unsuspecting coach in a bear hug; Yakov roars, first in surprise and then in anger.  Georgi glances up at the commotion, then goes back to warming up without a trace of surprise on his face. 

Yuuri decides to hover inconspicuously behind Phichit and Leo de la Iglesia, just in case Yakov is tempted to aim any of that molten fury his way.  If Victor’s acquaintances think of Yuuri as the biggest mistake Victor ever made, he can only _imagine_ what Yakov thinks of him. 

Soon they’re let out onto the ice, and Yuuri goes through his practice with the distant sound of Victor’s voice and Yakov’s growl as a backdrop.  Their words are indecipherable, but their tones aren’t: Victor’s voice is cheerful, while Yakov’s voice never softens, his replies becoming even more curt and abrupt as practice wears on.  Finally they both lapse into silence, and when Yuuri skates up to the boards at the end of the session, Victor’s smile is bright and strained.  Yakov doesn’t deign to glance Yuuri’s way.  He fires off a rapid stream of words at Georgi; even though Yuuri isn’t sure what he’s saying, his cadence is so eerily similar to Victor’s that he knows it must be criticism.  Georgi nods studiously as the two of them walk away. 

Yuuri snaps his skate guards on.  “He’s, um…?”

“Still mad!” Victor chirps.  He puts his hand on Yuuri’s shoulder, fingers squeezing a little too tight.  “Let’s get going, you have a press session after this.”

Yuuri allows himself to be steered off toward the locker room.  He feels like he should reassure Victor somehow, but he has no idea what to say. 

 

***

 

At dinner that evening, Victor eats and drinks and _drinks._   At first, Yuuri doesn’t think anything of it; how many times has he peeled a tipsy Victor off the dining room floor in Hasetsu?  But then Phichit shows up halfway through the meal, and with a few texts he draws a small crowd to their table.  Yuuri expects to see the light of Victor’s attention diffuse out politely to encompass everyone, but it doesn’t.  Instead it seems to narrow, to focus, concentrating down into a searing beam that he points at Yuuri and no one else.  It feels like an overcorrection.  Victor had veered so far away from him during the day, and now he’s stumbling back, a little too fast, coming in a little too close.  He’s on the cusp of being Yuuri’s Victor again, the Victor who valiantly attempts to match Minako drink for drink, growing progressively more laughing and handsy and prone to shedding his clothes as the evening wears on.  But he’s not quite that Victor yet.  There’s a feverish note in his laugh that Yuuri doesn’t recognize, and the arms he wraps around Yuuri are as heavy and inflexible as iron. 

When dinner’s over, Yuuri manages to get Victor clothed enough to avoid a Beijing jail cell and pushes him into a cab.  Once inside, Victor’s hands move with suspicious casualness to the hem of his shirt, and Yuuri reaches over and weaves his fingers tightly through Victor’s.  Victor stares down at his immobilized hands, stymied, then scoots over and lets most of his body weight slump against Yuuri’s side.  “It’s so hot, though,” he complains, the edge of his mouth muffled by Yuuri’s shoulder.

“The hotel’s not that far away,” Yuuri says.  “It’ll only be a couple minutes.”

“I won’t make it,” Victor says, real tragedy in his voice.

“You have to make it,” Yuuri says, giving him a little nudge with his shoulder.  “Who’s going to coach me tomorrow if you don’t?”

Victor blinks and doesn’t answer.  He’s quiet for long enough that Yuuri thinks the alcohol might be catching up with him, but then he shifts against Yuuri’s side, turning his head away.  “I’m sorry,” Victor says. 

“For what?”

“I shouldn’t be this drunk tonight.”

Yuuri doesn’t necessarily disagree, but there’s a new flatness in Victor’s tone that he doesn’t like.  “At least you handle your alcohol better than Celestino,” Yuuri says lightly.

Victor shakes his head.  “You deserve better from your coach than this.”

From this angle Yuuri can’t see the expression on Victor’s face, just the top of his head, his mussed hair.  “Victor,” he says, letting his thumb trace a slow arc over the back of Victor's hand.  “What did Yakov say to you during practice today?”

Victor huffs a short, mirthless laugh.  “The same things he said when I left,” he says.  “That I’m not serious enough to be anyone’s coach.  That I’m not reliable enough for anyone to depend on.”

Yuuri has always been a little awed by Yakov Feltsman, the man who coached Victor and so many other skaters to greatness.  Now that awe switches seamlessly to annoyance.  “Yakov’s never even seen you coach,” Yuuri says.  “Has he?”

“No.”

“And he hasn’t seen me skate since last year in Sochi.  How can he say anything about your coaching if he hasn’t seen the results of it yet?”

Victor says, quietly:  “He knows me.”

It sends a painful flicker through Yuuri’s chest.  _I know you too_ , Yuuri wants to tell him, even though he knows it’s not the same, even though he knows his seven months with Victor can’t compare to Yakov’s twenty years of mentorship.  Yakov _does_ know Victor, probably better than anyone else in the world.  But even so—

Yuuri rakes his thumbnail lightly against Victor’s hand.  “He’s wrong,” he says simply.  “We’ll show him that tomorrow with my short program.”

For a little while Victor is quiet and still against his side.  Then he lifts their joined hands and kisses Yuuri’s knuckles, his lips damp and imprecise against their tangled fingers.  The flicker of pain in Yuuri’s chest swells into an ache.  “Okay,” Victor says.  His voice is low but firm.   

When they reach the hotel, Yuuri puts a hand under Victor’s elbow to steady him and guides him through the lobby to the elevators.  When they get to their room, Yuuri opens the door and starts to aim Victor towards his bed, but Victor halts abruptly in the entryway.  He visibly gathers himself up, turns around, and puts his hands on Yuuri’s shoulders.  “All right,” he says, his voice still firm.  “You need to get plenty of sleep for tomorrow.  Go get ready for bed.”

He physically rotates Yuuri around and steers him toward the bathroom.  Yuuri is too surprised to protest.  He lets Victor plant him in front of the sink, and he reaches obediently for his toothbrush as Victor disappears through the open bathroom door.  Yuuri can hear the zip of a suitcase being opened and shut, and then Victor is back in the doorway, thrusting the sweatpants and t-shirt Yuuri wears to bed through the gap.  “Don’t dawdle,” Victor warns, in a cadence that Yuuri just knows has its origins in Yakov’s mouth.  He shuts the door with a _click._

Yuuri washes up and changes out of his clothes, feeling a little off-balance.  Behind the closed door he can hear Victor moving around, a series of rustles and thuds that Yuuri can’t quite decipher.  Yuuri emerges from the bathroom to find the covers of his bed folded open and his sleep mask on the nightstand, waiting for him.  He only wears it when there’s too much ambient light around; he looks at the window and sees a little glow bleeding around the edges of the curtains.  Victor is standing next to the nightstand, murmuring indistinctly at the tiny buttons of Yuuri’s travel alarm as he rotates it in his hands. 

The whole tableau sends another aching pang through Yuuri.  He’s used to Victor taking ownership of things Yuuri can do himself—applying his lip balm, gelling back his hair—but Victor’s never been quite this _thorough_ about it before.  It feels sweet and strange, like another overcorrection, Victor charging headfirst into the role of _coach_ in this quiet moment when there’s nothing Yuuri needs him to do.  It makes Yuuri want to tell him to stop—to stop worrying about being his coach and just be _Victor_ again.  All Yuuri really wants is the Victor of Hasetsu, the Victor that vanished when they stepped into the rink that morning.  _His_ Victor.

Then a cold prickle creeps up Yuuri’s spine.  It travels up his neck, covering his scalp like an icy hand: a windswept feeling of _wrongness_ , as if he’d been moments away from stepping off a cliff and only just pulled his foot back in time. 

The Victor of Hasetsu.  _His_ Victor.  What on earth is he thinking?  Since when has Yuuri only wanted _versions_ of Victor?  Since when has Yuuri wanted to take Victor piecemeal, separating out the parts he likes and pushing the rest away? 

Yuuri had promised himself months ago that he wouldn’t be like every other person in Victor’s life, holding his love at arm’s length and waiting for Victor to give him something first.  People have been doing that to him all day.  All day long people have come up to Victor and asked _Why aren_ _’t you skating anymore?_ , and Yuuri knows the message that lives underneath that, knows the message that Victor is hearing:

_Why did you stop doing what we loved?_

_How are we supposed to love you if you stop?_

On the beach all those months ago, Yuuri had told Victor he wanted all of him.  And that’s what Victor’s given him today: _all_ of him.  The sweet, affectionate Victor of Hasetsu—the guarded, distant Victor from the rink that morning—the hurt, drunk, earnestly _trying_ Victor standing right in front of him.  They’re all the same person. 

They’re all his Victor. 

The travel alarm beeps suddenly and Victor almost drops it.  He delivers it safely to the nightstand and looks around the room.  “Your alarm’s set,” Victor says, “and your gear’s all ready for tomorrow.”  He nods at a toiletries case sitting on the table.  “We’ll do hair and makeup here before we leave.  What am I forgetting?”  He looks at Yuuri questioningly.  “What else do you need me to do?”

Yuuri holds out his arms. 

He doesn’t think about doing it.  One moment his arms are at his sides and the next moment they’re outstretched, completely outside of his conscious control.  Somewhere inside Victor a magnetic pole is pulsing, and Yuuri’s hands can feel it.  They leap up, outward, insistent on crossing the gap. 

_Oh,_ Yuuri thinks, a little dazed.  _Is this what it's like?_

The inquisitive look on Victor’s face softens.  He moves around the edge of the bed, and as soon as he’s within arm’s reach Yuuri tugs him forward by his shirtfront, hands clumsy.  Victor is burning hot and smells like stale alcohol and Yuuri buries himself in all of it, digs his face into Victor’s rumpled collar and breathes him in.  He feels Victor’s arms come around to encircle him, too gently.  “Yuuri?” he asks, a touch of concern in his voice. 

“Thank you for doing all of this for me,” Yuuri says, his voice muffled. 

“Of course,” Victor says softly.  “It’s why I’m here.”

“Thank you for being here.”

One of Victor’s hands drifts up, starts to rub slow circles against the tense muscles of Yuuri’s back.  “Are you feeling nervous about tomorrow?” he asks.

In fact, Yuuri had temporarily forgotten to be nervous about tomorrow.  “A little,” he says anyway, because he knows it won’t last.  His anxiety will be waiting for him bright and early in the morning.   

Victor nods.  “I was always more nervous the night before a skate than I was the day of.”

“I know.” 

Victor’s massaging hand pauses on his back.  Yuuri realizes with a lurch that he’s just let slip another unauthorized insight into Victor’s life.  _“How_ do you know?” Victor asks, his voice teasing. 

Yuuri makes an indistinct croak of embarrassment.  Victor laughs, rocking him back and forth a little.  _“Yuuri,”_ he says, “my little encyclopedia.  When did I say that?”

“You say it all the time in your interviews!” Yuuri protests.  “Anyone would know that.”

“I don’t think _anyone_ pays as much attention to me as you do,” Victor says.  “You really must be my number-one fan.”

Yuuri knows his face is burning.  Victor squeezes him, his arms cinching as tight as Yuuri could want them.  “Well, now it’s my turn to be _your_ number-one fan,” Victor says.  His breath is ticklish against Yuuri’s ear.  “I’ll have to track down that little skater from the Kyushu Championship and tell him I’m stealing his title.”

Yuuri doesn’t trust himself to speak.  His entire body is full of carbonation, bubbling and effervescent, and he’s afraid if he opens his mouth he’ll foam over.  After a moment Victor pulls back to look at him, his expression searching.  “You look tired,” he says.  Then, with a sudden swell of energy: “Yuuri, why are you still awake?  Into bed, into bed!”

Victor wheels him around by the shoulders and plunks him down onto the waiting sheets.  Yuuri reaches for the covers, but Victor is too quick for him: he draws them up to Yuuri’s collarbones and picks up the sleep mask from the nightstand.  He stretches the elastic between his thumbs and looks at Yuuri expectantly. 

Yuuri gives it one last try.  “I can do it,” he says. 

Victor’s smile has the tiniest hint of self-consciousness in it.  “I know,” he says. 

Yuuri closes his eyes.  He feels Victor lean down, a radiating heat, and he slips the mask over Yuuri’s eyes, lifting his head to tuck the elastic behind his ears.  Once it’s in place, his hands slip down to cup Yuuri’s face.  “Okay?”

“Yes,” Yuuri says. 

“Good.”  He’s leaning in close enough that Yuuri can feel the alcohol-sour gust of his breath.  “Go to sleep.  I’m going to get ready for bed, but I promise I’ll be quiet.”

“Okay.”

Victor stands back up.  The full sensory experience of him diminishes; heat and scent dwindle away into nothing but sound.  Yuuri lies there in the cotton darkness and listens to it: there’s the creak of the bathroom door, a splash of water from the faucet, the swish of a toothbrush over teeth.  When Victor comes back into the room, the sounds are softer: the rustle of clothes being folded and laid down, the muted click of a light switch, soft footsteps padding across the carpet. 

The footsteps don’t make it all the way to the other bed.  They pause.

Yuuri feels a light fingertip lift a sticky lock of hair off his forehead.  Then the curve of Victor’s palm fits itself against Yuuri’s cheek, and Yuuri can feel the heat of him leaning in close, closer than he was before.  The alcohol on Victor’s breath has been mostly scrubbed away by mint; it tickles the air around Yuuri’s nose, his cheek, his lips. 

Victor presses a kiss against his forehead.  It’s soft, and warm, and it lingers longer than it should, his thumb tracing the seam between the sleep mask and Yuuri’s cheek.  Yuuri’s heart hitches painfully in his chest.  A wave of longing floods his system, overwhelming in its urgency, drowning out every thought in his head but one:

It’s not enough. 

Victor is being so sweet, and tender, and caring, and it’s _not enough_.  At the beginning of the summer Yuuri was sent spinning by the causal weight of Victor’s arm over his shoulders, the nudge of Victor’s foot against his ankle, and now Victor’s lips are on his skin and all Yuuri can think about is _more_.  All Yuuri wants is for those lips to lift off his forehead, graze against his nose, and settle down forever against his mouth. 

Or not forever.  It only has to be once.  Because what Victor does once, he’ll do again, and again, and again. 

Victor’s lips lift off his forehead.  Yuuri’s heart lifts with it, wishing, _wanting,_ but the heat of Victor’s presence isn’t getting closer.  It’s receding.  The tickle of air against Yuuri’s face is gone. 

“Goodnight,” Victor whispers. 

Yuuri should do something.  He should _say_ something.  He should lift off the sleep mask and pull Victor back down to him.  Disappointment is starting to curl tight fingers around his heart, and if it squeezes any harder he’s afraid he’ll crack. 

But his lips only manage to shape themselves around one word.  “Goodnight,” Yuuri whispers.

Victor’s hand slips away.  Yuuri listens to his footsteps as he goes over to his own bed, climbing under the covers with a careful minimum of rustling.  Yuuri turns his head and rubs his cheek hard against his pillow, scraping away the lingering static of Victor’s touch on his skin. 

This isn’t what he should be thinking about, the night before a competition.  Victor has given up so much to get him here, and Yuuri can’t repay him by getting so lost in his own head that he bombs his first event.  He needs to turn his brain off.  He needs to sleep. 

He needs to be ready for what tomorrow brings. 

 

***

 

Tomorrow brings anxiety.

He knew it would.  The tug-of-war inside his mind is officially over: his excitement, pride, and confidence have all retreated uneasily under the hard _thud thud thud_ of his pulse in his ears.  Victor is hungover and quiet as he does Yuuri’s hair, and Yuuri is so encased in tension that when Victor touches him he doesn’t feel anything at all.  “Nervous?” Victor asks, stepping back to give Yuuri a once-over.

“Oh,” Yuuri says, the strain obvious in his voice, “a little.”

It only gets worse when they arrive at the rink.  Victor is immediately swamped by a new crop of acquaintances, and Yuuri has nowhere near enough mental fortitude to listen to another twenty people lament Victor’s career change.  He gives Victor’s arm a squeeze and goes forward without him, looking around vaguely for Phichit.  Phichit is always more excited than nervous before a competition, and Yuuri could use a cheerful distraction. 

Unfortunately, when he finds Phichit, the look he gives Yuuri is more sheepish than cheerful.  “Um, Yuuri?” he says. 

The _thud thud thud_ of Yuuri’s heart immediately turns into a throb of pain in his head.  He’s known Phichit long enough to know exactly what an apologetic _um, Yuuri_ means.  _“_ Oh no, _”_ Yuuri groans.  “What did you post?”

“It’s not _that_ bad,” Phichit says.  He hands Yuuri his phone. 

It is, in fact, that bad: it’s an Instagram photo of Yuuri and Victor at the restaurant last night, at the height of Victor’s drunkenness.  Victor is shirtless—about two minutes away from being pantsless, if Yuuri remembers correctly—and he has his arms around Yuuri in a very un-coachlike fashion.  There’s an arch, proprietary look in his eyes, a look that suggests the evening ended on a much more salacious note than Victor making Yuuri brush his teeth and tucking him into bed.  Anyone who saw this picture would think the two of them had gone back to their hotel and slept together. 

And the worst part was, they _hadn_ _’t_.  They hadn’t even _kissed_.

Yuuri is so distracted that he doesn’t notice someone approaching him from behind.  A warm, octopus-like presence abruptly attaches to his side.  “Yuuri,” a deep voice says chidingly.  “Why didn’t you invite me?”

Yuuri’s heart jumps halfway out of his chest, even though he knows full well who it is.  Yuuri has experienced variations of the Chris Giacometti full-body grope more than once over the last five years.  If Chris has already seen Phichit’s photo, it must be making the rounds fast.  The entire skating world has probably seen it by now.

“Chris!” Victor calls out cheerfully.  He’s freed himself from the morass of the crowd and is making his way down the hall towards their little group.  Chris’s hand, fresh off a journey across Yuuri’s ass, zings out to grasp the coach’s badge on Victor’s chest as soon as Victor’s close enough.  Victor lets him tug and frown at it without complaint.  He’s been friends with Chris for ages, and there’s absolutely no question that Chris has magnets in his hands. 

But Victor doesn’t touch him back. 

Something in Yuuri’s mind curls around itself.  Victor doesn’t touch Chris, and when a pair of women in Russian warm-up gear call out to Victor from nearby, Yuuri sees that pleasant, distant smile from yesterday slide onto Victor’s face.  Cheerful, ordinary Victor vanishes; this other version, icy and faraway, takes the stage instead.

Chris is saying something to Yuuri, but before Yuuri can shift his attention back, Chris leans in very close to Yuuri’s face.  He sniffs.  “Ah,” he says knowingly. “You’re using that lip balm I told Victor about.”

“Yeah,” Yuuri says, taking a tiny step back. 

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Chris says.  “Moisturizing without being medicinal.”  He gives Yuuri a sly look.  “The flavor’s nice, too.  Good for kissing.”

Yuuri can feel his face starting to heat up.  “I wouldn’t know.”

“You don’t have to be coy with _me_ , Yuuri,” Chris says.  “I saw that photo of you two at the restaurant last night.”

“It wasn’t what it looked like,” Yuuri says.  “He was drunk.  _You_ know what he’s like when he's drunk.”

“I do indeed,” Chris says.  There’s an amused cast to his smile.  “I’ve been getting drunk with him for years, and I’ve never been on the receiving end of a grope like that.”  He sighs.  “No matter how many hints I dropped.”

Chris turns around, putting his back to Victor.  “But Yuuri,” he says, his voice low.  “I can’t understand why _you_ , of all people, would want him to stop skating.  Isn’t his skating the reason you’ve admired him for so long?”

“Of course,” Yuuri says, a little startled.  “But—”

“Believe me, I know it must be thrilling to have him all to yourself,” Chris says.  “But we both know that he belongs on the ice.  Why would you stop him from doing what he was meant to do?”

For the first time since he woke up that morning, the cold rime of anxiety encasing Yuuri starts to melt a little.  A knot of indignation takes up residence in his stomach, as hot as a coal.  Chris is supposed to be Victor’s friend, and even _he_ _’s_ saying things like _what he was meant to do_ and _where he belongs._   Even he doesn’t seem to think it matters what Victor _wants._

Chris rotates his shoulder and grimaces.  “I should start stretching,” he says.  He gives Yuuri’s shoulder a little pat.  “I’m looking forward to your short program, by the way.  I’ve heard it’s very... _different_ from your others.”

Chris gives him a wink and heads down the hall towards his coach, and Yuuri is left there alone with the hard _thud_ _thud thud_ of his heartbeat.  It’s faster and more erratic than it was a minute ago.  There’s a strange, electric energy building up inside his muscles, and Yuuri moves to the nearest wall, pushes hard against it, trying to stretch through the jitter and buzz. 

No one is asking Victor what he wants.  Even Yuuri’s been too afraid to ask him, flat-out, _“What do you want?”_   But unlike everyone else, Yuuri is the world’s foremost researcher in the field of _Victor Nikiforov_ , and he has seven months of evidence neatly organized in his head.  For so long he’s resisted putting a conclusion to it, paranoid that he’s missing something, some hint or clue that Victor’s presence in his life is an illusion destined to break. 

But they’re far outside the bubble of their life in Hasetsu, and the illusion persistently refuses to break.  Victor is surrounded by people he knows, and he doesn't touch them.  Yuuri stays fixed in place, and Victor’s confident stride veers out of true.  It was a very short, straight line from the hotel bathroom to Victor’s bed last night, and _still_ Victor’s feet were pulled to Yuuri’s bedside, his hand drawn to Yuuri’s face with the softest magnetic _snick_.

Yuuri has been too afraid to ask Victor what he wants, but all the evidence is pointing uniformly in one direction.  Victor came to Hasetsu of his own volition.  Victor _stayed_ in Hasetsu, even when Yuuri disappointed him, even when Yuuri pushed him away.  Victor stayed, and he gave _everything_ to Yuuri: his time, his creative brilliance, his support and affection.  Victor stood in front of two branching paths and took the one the world was begging him not to follow.  He chose not to listen to them. 

He chose Yuuri.

Yuuri swivels around so the wall is at his back.  He digs his shoulderblades against it, feeling a little lightheaded.  Victor is still talking to the two women in Russian warm-up gear, and even though Yuuri doesn’t know the language, he knows what they’re saying.  They’re telling Victor he’s made a mistake.  They’re telling Victor they know what’s best for him, and what’s best for him is _not Yuuri_.  They’re telling Victor that Yuuri is a waste of time, a whim, a sad gap in an otherwise unbroken chain of success. 

And Victor is standing there with his arms crossed, each magnetic palm tucked into the joint of the opposite elbow, politely smiling and utterly unmoved.

A wave of longing crashes through Yuuri with painful force.  For seven months he’s wondered why no one ever wrote about the helpless way Victor’s hands reach out for things.  Now he knows the answer: Victor’s never demonstrated it to anyone else.  Victor’s hands move irresistibly to Makkachin’s fur, to Yakov’s bulky shoulders, to Yuuri’s waist and lips and wrists.  And that’s it.  That’s the end of the list.

Yuuri is the world’s foremost researcher in the field of _Victor Nikiforov_ , and also, it turns out, a terrible scientist.  He’s been contaminating the experiment with his own presence the whole time. 

The electric energy inside Yuuri is becoming unbearable.  He hefts one arm into the air and stretches it.  The motion catches Victor’s eye: he turns his head slightly, giving Yuuri a better view of that strange, impermeable expression on his face.  It’s smooth, and Victor’s smile sits in it like cut glass, so artificial it hurts Yuuri to look at.  Yuuri switches arms, stretches it high, putting more motion into Victor’s peripheral vision.  Victor turns his head further and his eyes find Yuuri. 

The glassy edge of his smile softens.  It’s a change of only a few millimeters, but it alters the whole character of his face.   Every version of Victor is Yuuri’s Victor, but Yuuri can’t be blamed for liking this one the most: fondness in his eyes, sweetness in the crooked line of his lips. 

One of the women notices his distraction and raises her voice.  Victor turns back to look at her.  The radiant light of Victor’s attention shifts away from Yuuri, but this time Yuuri doesn’t feel it like a loss or a chill. 

It feels like a challenge. 

Yuuri’s about to go out there and skate in front of a very unhappy audience.  They’re all going to see Victor standing on the sidelines, and they’ll think, collectively, _what a waste._ They’ll watch Yuuri skate out to center ice and think only about how selfish he is, depriving the world of a legendary talent.  They’ll look at Victor and think, indignantly, _he_ _’s ours._

_No_ , Yuuri thinks, with startling certainty.  _He_ _’s not._

_He's_ _mine._

And by the time his short program is over, everyone in the world is going to know it. 

 

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your kind comments on this work--they are so, so appreciated! 
> 
> I also wanted to say a special thank you to [Dalyre](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Dalyre/pseuds/Dalyre), who very kindly translated the first two chapters into Chinese ([1,](http://dalyre.lofter.com/post/1d0ca8e8_10a55ab5) [2,](http://dalyre.lofter.com/post/1d0ca8e8_10a960f2) [3](http://dalyre.lofter.com/post/1d0ca8e8_10ad4578)), and to Tumblr user [domokunrainbowkinz,](http://domokunrainbowkinz.tumblr.com/) who drew [fanart of Victor and Yuuri](http://domokunrainbowkinz.tumblr.com/post/164163429672/yuuri-brushes-past-it-all-he-steps-into-the) at the end of Chapter 2! I'm so excited that you enjoyed the story enough to dedicate your time to it like that--thank you!!
> 
> Next time: the Cup of China, Free Skate!


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